


Foundations

by PutItBriefly



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Season Six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 01:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PutItBriefly/pseuds/PutItBriefly
Summary: He recognised that feeling. That coiled sickness in the pit of his stomach—it was being right.Necessity would make her love him, he had said. Being what he was, doing the things he did, brought enemies that would harm their child. She would see that she needed him, needed his protection and she would love him again.What he said was no less horrible for being true. She had called it a threat and she was right. He locked her inside his own mistakes as firmly has he had locked her in the dungeon all those years ago.





	Foundations

He recognised that feeling. That coiled sickness in the pit of his stomach—it was being  _ right.  _

Necessity would make her love him, he had said. Being what he was, doing the things he did, brought enemies that would harm their child. She would see that she needed him, needed his protection and she would  _ love _ him again.

What he said was no less horrible for being true. She had called it a threat and she was right. He locked her inside his own mistakes as firmly has he had locked her in the dungeon all those years ago.

But now,  _ now, _ she wore the ring he put on her finger. Now, she slept naked in his (their) bed, her nightgown discarded over the back of a chair. Now, she signed her name  _ Belle Gold _ as if his name was the natural thing to call herself.

He had never really believed that she loved him, but a plausible alternate explanation had eluded him. That haunted him more than the thought that his feelings were not returned. To love her without being loved was reasonable. That she could be confused, or deluded, or somehow bewitched was not. She was stubborn. She was a fighter. She thought she could trust him. (She could. He would harm many people, but never  _ her.  _ She could trust him. But for her to know she could trust him, to actually trust him in her heart, that was something else.) She had decided she wanted him, was ready to fight whatever battles that decision required, was able to believe in him despite every indication that he was not forthcoming, that his reasons for concealments were things she could not forgive.

She was good.

He was not.

She loved him because he had made her.

He had dragged her and their child—their poor, dear, innocent child—into the dregs of his life, down so low neither of them could navigate it without his guidance.

And she loved him for it.

Had the Curse of the Dark One left him physically capable of retching, he would. But, alas.

The only fleeting moment he had really believed she loved him  _ before _ was when she had no idea who he was and he was dying. To believe her feelings were real then was of no consequence. She was too confused to tell him he was wrong, and if he was, well, what did it matter? He was going to die.

If a man were going to die, he might as well die believing he had been loved.

Immortality was its own curse, sometimes.

He feared death enough that he wouldn’t wish his immortality away, but when one lived forever, everything mattered. (And nothing mattered. He’d lived too long to get invested in much of anything anymore. Everything around him was fleeting, and he was permanent.) To live believing one was loved was a far more terrible fate than to die believing it.

He had to look at her every day. Touch her. Hold her and kiss her and talk to her and listen to her. When he didn’t believe she loved him, those things had made him happy.  _ Indescribably _ happy. He never needed more than the privilege of having a life with her. To be loved by her would be asking too much.

But, she did.

Because she wouldn’t be safe otherwise.

The baby monitor on the nightstand crackled. Snuffling first, then wailing.

Belle stirred. She rolled over onto her back. In the muggy summer night, she had barely covered herself. The sheet was bunched low on her stomach. The baby monitor glowed in pulse with their child’s cries, and he could see her face, her neck, her breasts, all eerie green and shadows. She was squinting up at him.

“You’re awake.”

Rumple swung his legs off the bed. “I can see to Gideon.”

Belle was already reaching for her robe. “You always do. I will this time.”

“No, no, you get some sleep.”

She didn’t close her robe. According to innumerable books, skin-to-skin contact was good for babies. Holding their child against her bare chest was something she made a point to do every day anyway. Honestly, he wondered why she even put it on. “I want to. Soothing him at night is part of being a parent.” 

Her side of the bed was further from the door than his. She shuffled around it, trying to avoid succumbing to the many dangers a dimly lit bedroom crowded with furniture presented to bare toes. She didn’t leave without brushing her fingers against his temple. Of course she wouldn’t. She loved him.

“I appreciate that you tend to him,” she said, because of course she would. She was good hearted and did things like vocalise appreciation because that was what a caring partner did. “I am the most well-rested new mother in the world. But, I want to have a turn, too.”

She left, disappeared out the bedroom door and down the hall.

The cries coming from the baby monitor stopped. First, they were replaced with her voice, whispering sweetness to their son. “Gideon, Mummy’s here.”

Then, she sang to him.

And then he heard nothing and he  _ knew _ that nothing, had  _ done _ that nothing many times in the past week or so. That was a  _ he wasn’t crying, but he wasn’t falling back asleep, either, better cuddle on the rocking chair _ nothing.   

She was gone for perhaps an hour.

When she slipped back into their bedroom, he was still awake, sitting against the headboard, just as he had been when she left. Just as he had been since she fell asleep.  (He probably shouldn’t have made love to her if he was going to feel this sick about it afterwards, but she wanted to and he wasn’t exactly a champion of self-denial.)

“He’s as good at sleeping as you are.” 

She whispered. Did she think Gideon would be disturbed if she spoke normally or did she think the hour demanded she be quiet? He didn’t know. Either way, it was a cute affectation.

“I tried to explain to him that Papa doesn’t sleep because he’s magic, but Gideon didn’t listen.”

She performed the reverse of her previous shuffle and her toes arrived in the bed unscathed. Her robe—still untied—was discarded.

“I can sleep,” he said.

“I know. I’ve seen it. You just don’t.” She put her head on her pillow. “It helps if you lie down.”

Trancelike, he did so.

She was laying on her side, facing him, so he did the same. She arranged the sheet around them, tucking it over both their shoulders.

“And then, whatever you are thinking about that’s keeping you awake, you stop thinking about it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Have you ever tried counting sheep?”

“Only when I had a farm.”

She giggled. “Rumplestiltskin had a farm, e-i-e-i-o.”

What a bewildering woman.

“I know what I’ll sing to Gideon the next time he can’t sleep.”

“Next time, it’s my turn.”

Her hair bunched against the pillow as she rolled her cheek in a nodding motion without lifting her head. “Back to turn taking?”

“Were we off it?”

“When every turn is your turn, that’s not taking turns.”

“I don’t need sleep. You do. My way makes more sense.”

“You  _ do _ need it. Mentally, emotionally. It must be exhausting to think about the things you think about all the time and never get to just turn it off.”

He didn’t feel exhaustion in a physical sense. He wasn’t capable of it within the magical bubble of Storybrooke. He had had enough tastes of physical frailty to be disgusted with it. The months between waking from the original Dark Curse and when he dropped the potion down the well hadn’t been too bad. Mr. Gold slept every night for twenty-eight years and he was used to it. But afterwards, when his old vitality surged through him again, it had been very difficult to acclimate himself to the need for regular sleep when he left Storybrooke and when the Curse of the Dark One had been taken on by others.

Emotional exhaustion—that he did feel, almost constantly.

To fall asleep and not  _ feel _ anything for eight hours, that would be wonderful.

But instead he said, “The things I think about? What do you think I think about?”

“I don’t know. What everyone thinks about, I guess, and other things.”

“Please. Elaborate.”

“Work? I’m sure you think about when whose rent is due and interesting things in the shop and your clocks. And you think about me and Gideon. And, I don’t know, other things.”

“Nefarious things?”

“Probably.”

He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. “I can’t be nefarious; I have a child. I have to set a good example.”

She laughed. “I’m glad.”

“I don’t want him to be like me. I never wanted that.”

He didn’t have to look at her to know she wasn’t smiling anymore. “I know.”

She didn’t say she  _ had _ thought he wanted that, once. They both knew and it was so ridiculous and insulting he didn’t know what to say about it anyway. 

“So, um.” She scooted closer, lying against him with her head on his chest. “What were you thinking about when I was sleeping?”

“You.”

She kissed his shoulder. “Please. Elaborate.”

She probably thought he was reliving their lovemaking in fantasy-enhanced detail. Her fingers were tracing light circles on the skin of his belly.

“I was thinking,” he said, knowing that what he was about to say was horrible but every polite lie he had ever told her had always,  _ always _ made things worse in the long run and he doubted he could weather feeling worse than he did right now, “that I finally believe you love me.”

She beamed.

“And that should make me happy, but it doesn’t.”

It came as no surprise when she withdrew, clutching the bed sheet to her chest in a farce of modesty.

“Rumple.” She said his name, but all he heard was her pain. 

He sat up again, his back against the headboard. “I told you necessity would make you love me. I wish I had been wrong. You and Gideon suffered so much. The price was too high.”

She wiped furiously at her eyes. “No, Rumple…”

“I built our marriage on lies the first time, Belle. What are we building on this time?”

“Love?”

“That wasn’t enough before”—

“It wasn’t enough because you didn’t  _ believe it _ before. Now you do!”

She was so earnest. And she was right. He couldn’t argue with her. And yet, confidence in this fresh start was impossible after all the chances she had given him already, all the times he had ruined it already. 

_ “Rumple.”  _ She knelt beside him on the mattress, the sheet forgotten in her zeal to get through to him. “I remember when you said that. You said I would need you, that Gideon would need you. I know I treated it like a threat at the time, I was so upset, I didn’t want to listen. And I said something like ‘threats won’t make me love you again.’”

He nodded. His confession had been an attempt to learn from his mistakes, but doing things a different way was not yielding a better result. Instead, he was reliving a particularly pungent nightmare. At least before, he had not had the auditory assistance of Belle herself repeating the angry words they had traded.

“And then you said necessity would.”

He nodded again. He remembered this conversation too well.

“But, Rumple, I never stopped loving you. I just said that because I was angry.”

She reached out, took his face in both of her hands. “Listen to me, please. When I left you—it was never, _ever_ about if I loved you or not. We weren’t in a good place when Gideon was conceived. I thought we could give him a better life apart. And now I know that’s not true. Apart, we destroyed ourselves, we destroyed our family. Working together, _believing in each other_ and trusting each other, got us our baby back. We’re a team. That’s what our marriage is built on.”

He didn’t sleep that night.

But he did clutch his wife and weep, and in the light of day, he felt better for it.

Not so tired.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is brought to you by being awake at four am and thinking about how season four Rumple didn't believe Belle loved him, but season two Rumple had no issues at all with making dramatic speeches about how much Belle loved him.
> 
> Not beta'd because it was written between the hours of four and seven am.


End file.
